Content Management Is Not Rocket Science
Web content management is not rocket science. But web content management and rocket science are a powerful combination. One of Quantum Art’s earliest international customers was the Khrunichev Space Center, the Russian rocket science institution. They are the people behind the Soviet Mir space station and the international version currently under development. So when the scientists needed a way to communicate with their peers or publish information for the rest of us, they realized that they need a solution for managing online content.
The mind of an engineer works in mysterious ways. I realize now that Khrunichev’s problems were not unique, but when they approached us wanting to manage information by types, not by pages, we were simply too excited about our customers sharing the same philosophy as we were on managing online content. It’s not about pages, but about handling your content inventory, reusing information, and managing relations between different pieces of content to achieve a fluid publishing environment.
When we started working with Khrunichev, it didn’t occur to me that the problems we solved would ultimately lead to the idea of a content application server, a solution that for many reasons is replacing traditional web CMS tools. A parallel that I draw now is that to the CERN content management project that started in the early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee and grew into the world wide web. At CERN it was nuclear physicists that pioneered HTML to create the fabric of the web as we know it today. By a similar token, Khrunichev’s rocket scientists pushed Quantum Art to rethink its product development strategy and deliver an enterprise solution for publishing to the new fabric of the web, the one where information is structured, tagged, and easily indexed.
In short, kudos to Quantum Art’s engineers, who may not be rocket scientists, but who could certainly speak their language and years ago foresee problems that are now becoming commonplace.
P.S. This glance into the past was in part caused by the product development plans Quantum Art’s technology team presented to the management earlier this week. The plans will soon be publicly announced on Quantum Art’s site with a flurry of activity around them. Check back shortly!
The mind of an engineer works in mysterious ways. I realize now that Khrunichev’s problems were not unique, but when they approached us wanting to manage information by types, not by pages, we were simply too excited about our customers sharing the same philosophy as we were on managing online content. It’s not about pages, but about handling your content inventory, reusing information, and managing relations between different pieces of content to achieve a fluid publishing environment.
When we started working with Khrunichev, it didn’t occur to me that the problems we solved would ultimately lead to the idea of a content application server, a solution that for many reasons is replacing traditional web CMS tools. A parallel that I draw now is that to the CERN content management project that started in the early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee and grew into the world wide web. At CERN it was nuclear physicists that pioneered HTML to create the fabric of the web as we know it today. By a similar token, Khrunichev’s rocket scientists pushed Quantum Art to rethink its product development strategy and deliver an enterprise solution for publishing to the new fabric of the web, the one where information is structured, tagged, and easily indexed.
In short, kudos to Quantum Art’s engineers, who may not be rocket scientists, but who could certainly speak their language and years ago foresee problems that are now becoming commonplace.
P.S. This glance into the past was in part caused by the product development plans Quantum Art’s technology team presented to the management earlier this week. The plans will soon be publicly announced on Quantum Art’s site with a flurry of activity around them. Check back shortly!
posted by spiodin at 9:38 AM
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